How we check our dates

Taiwan What's On is a calendar of dated events across Taiwan, published by Maison V Group LLC. This page explains, in plain terms, how a date gets onto the calendar, what our labels mean, and what happens when a date turns out to be wrong. It is the standard every listing is held to, including the ones in our festival listings.

The rule: a date needs a source

Nothing lists without a source. Every event in the calendar was checked against the organiser, the venue, a sanctioning body or an official body such as the Tourism Administration, a county or city government, the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration or TAITRA. Each record carries the page where its date appears and the day it was checked. If no page at that standard states the date, the event does not get a record until one does. Events we know happen but cannot yet source to that standard are left out, and we would rather leave a gap than fill it with a date copied from another calendar.

At the time of writing the calendar lists 446 events, of which 293 carry dates published by an organiser or an official body. The rest carry the other label, explained next.

Two labels: official and expected

Every date carries one of two standings. An official date is one the organiser or an official body has published for that edition. An expected date is an annual fixture whose next edition has not been announced yet, where the date in the calendar follows the established pattern: the same dates as the previous edition, or the same rule, such as the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. Expected dates say so, in plain words, on the event page and in any article that uses them.

Three current examples show the line. COMPUTEX Taipei 2027 is official, because TAITRA's own closing release for the 2026 show states the 2027 dates and venues. The Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage 2027 is expected, because Jenn Lann Temple sets the date by divination on Lantern Festival day and announces it only then, so no 2027 date exists to publish yet. The Penghu International Fireworks Festival 2027 is expected because Penghu County had not published its 2027 season when we checked, even though the festival runs every year. The label follows the evidence, not the fame of the event.

One Taiwan case deserves its own sentence, because it shows the labels working at full stretch. For the Taiwan Lantern Festival 2027 in Miaoli, Miaoli County has announced dates of 20 February to 7 March 2027 and the festival's official competition site publishes the same period, but the county's announcement describes its own dates as tentatively scheduled. Our record carries the dates, and our article repeats the county's wording, because the source's own caution is part of the fact.

When sources disagree

Sometimes two respectable listings give different dates. Then we go back to the strongest source available, the organiser over the venue, the venue over a ticket seller, an official body over all three, and we record the disagreement in our notes rather than hiding it. Where a date depends on a calendar calculation, such as a lunar festival day, we check the calculation against the official holiday calendar as well as the organiser. Temple dates get one further rule of their own: where a date is set by divination and announced by a temple, as the Mazu pilgrimages are, the temple's announcement is the only source that can settle it, and until it lands the record stays expected however confidently anyone else prints a date. If no source settles the question, the event waits.

Corrections

Dates move. When an organiser changes a date, cancels an edition or publishes the programme that an expected date was waiting for, we update the record, change the label if the new evidence earns it, and note the new check date. If you spot an error, the most useful correction you can send us is the organiser or official page that settles it. We will recheck the event against that page and fix the record if it disagrees with us. A calendar is only worth using if its dates can be challenged and corrected in the open, and this page is where that promise is written down.

Sources: the calendar dataset behind this site, in which every record carries its source page and check date; the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration 2027 government office calendar; Tourism Administration, TAITRA and organiser pages as cited on individual event records. Checked 27 October 2026.

More reading on the articles page, or go straight to the events calendar.